6. What if a Webmaster asks me to link to one site, but links back to me from a different site?

This process is sometimes referred to as '3-way linking' or a 'linking triangle'. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with 3-way linking as it can sometimes be done for convenience. However first thing you need to do is 1/ Evaluate site you are linking to and 2/ Evaluate site and page you are getting link from. So is outbound link destination relevant to your site, and is inbound link you are going to receive also coming from a quality related website?

7. Do I want to associate my business with this particular site?

It is a simple question to answer and this should form part of your decision making process. If you think you have been approached by a good website then chances are others will feel same and possibly search engines too.

8. How do I know if my link partners are still linking to me?

You can do this manually by keeping information for each link partner in an Excel spreadsheet or similar and then periodically check exact URLs your link should appear on. However if you get to stage of having hundreds of link partners this may become rather impractical. At this stage a reciprocal link checker might be advisable. www.linksmanger.com offers a link management system that includes periodic checking of link partners as well as a link exchange system for around $20 a month.

9. So what are best links?

One answer could be “the ones that deliver lots of relevant traffic”. However links can mean different things to different people. Natural linking [when people link to you without you asking] is a great reward, but it is also wise to ensure you have some links from quality sites in your industry. Teoma can be a good place to find such sites as it focuses more on human edited results than say Google for example. Simply make a search with a good key phrase on www.teoma.com and you will quickly see which websites are ‘authority’ sites. Set about trying to get listed on as many of best ones as you can.

Another good tip is to submit pages of forum that have your link on, to search engines. Now people are going to be sitting there reading this and thinking, 'there is no need to do that, Google crawls every link on a page and they will eventually get to link to your site'. However, EVENTUALLY, is key word (if you pardon pun), submitting directly to search engines will make process quicker. Also, there is evidence to suggest that pages submitted directly to search engines and linked to in other pages gain higher ranking.

Furthermore, Google does not penalise for over submission, so where's harm? Always ensure that you exchange links with sites relevant to yours, but not too relevant, last thing you want to do is promote your competition. For example, if you run a web design company, exchange links with web design resource sites, SEOs, graphic designers, but not other web design companies - unless you have formed a good relationship with that company and work collaboratively on projects or work in different markets.

Good luck on your quest for links!